<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Every Step a Fingerprint by lushthemagicdragon</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22380817">Every Step a Fingerprint</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/lushthemagicdragon/pseuds/lushthemagicdragon'>lushthemagicdragon</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Critical Role (Web Series)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Caleb's a fucking mess we all know it, Established Relationship, Foot Fetish, Foot Jobs, Foot Massage, Light BDSM, M/M, This is it the foot fetish fic the entire table wanted, Vaguely referencing Caleb's trauma through therapeutic bdsm, equal parts sexy soft and therapeutic, they're both switches, this isn't even my fetish guys but here I am, very vaguely</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-01-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-01-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 16:08:11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,288</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22380817</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/lushthemagicdragon/pseuds/lushthemagicdragon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The fact that Essek's feet have seen so little wear throughout his life is novel. It's exciting, elevating, beautiful. This particular realization on Caleb's part is unexpected.   </p><p>AKA the Foot Fetish Fic episode 91 asked for.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Essek Thelyss/Caleb Widogast</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>112</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Every Step a Fingerprint</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This was originally titled "And I Would Walk 500 Miles (so you would never walk a single one)" because I'm a dumbass.</p><p>Special thanks to ~XinyiC for the beta and Wes for encouraging me to actually write this.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>To say that Essek’s feet were baby soft would be hyperbole. It would be overly poetic, floral in a way that could only describe feet that had never in their short lifetime yet been used. It couldn’t truly apply to an adult, a grown elf of 120 years, who learned to walk from his nursemaid’s arms to his mother’s. Essek’s feet had form and structure to support his body, all the necessary firm skin around heel and ball to carry his weight. What made them special was the etheriality of them, as if he had stopped using them after they formed to completeness and let them drift--which, in a way, was exactly what happened. </p><p>Caleb never thought that someone’s feet would be the thing to catch his interest. He of village stock, of hard workers, of second-hand shoes climbing the stairs of Rexxentrum libraries, of leather boots trudging through the wilderness with weeks between opportunities for cleanliness. Essek’s feet were something else entirely, some new facet of reality he had never considered. </p><p>It all started when Essek started using those feet more often, when the presence of other people did not instantly send him up an inch up off the ground. With Caleb around his home more often, he found himself walking those stairs, the heels of his boots clicking against stone and carpet, from sitting room, to kitchen, to study, to laboratory, to bedroom. He never walked around his own home so much before, often stationary for hours upon hours, lost in his own research. Now it was beginning to ache, his feet out of practice. </p><p>Caleb noticed Essek grimace as he got to his feet, after they had spent the last hour on their knees tracing patterns into his floor. The question didn’t need to be asked in words, only in looks. Essek shook his head to dismiss the concern, ready enough to continue with their work before Caleb interrupted. </p><p>“Are you sure?” </p><p>“I’m fine, my feet hurt a bit, is all.” </p><p>That was the end of it, until Essek grimaced again when he next stood, and flinched a third time. “<i>Sit</i>.” Caleb beseeched, and after a beat, “Please.” That was enough to get Essek into the armchair in his study, Caleb undoing the laces on the back of his boot with care. Leather slid across Essek’s calf and off his foot, exposing well manicured toes to the open air. Caleb had seen his feet before, once, when he joined the Nein in their hot tub, but he hadn’t <i>looked</i>. He hadn’t seen a reason to, feet were feet. Feet were practical, not beautiful like the line of Essek’s leg or the curve of his back that had been revealed when he finally removed his cloak and mantle. </p><p>Caleb had been wrong about many things before, he’s no stranger to admitting his own fallibility. This one was unexpected.  </p><p>Essek flexed and pointed his toes at their release from the confines of his boot, and the elegance of the curve stood out in Caleb’s mind. There was not a fleck of dirt under his nails, all perfectly smooth as if they were drawn in pen and not naturally made. The calluses he expected on the soles of Essek’s feet were soft where they should be hard and rough, unworked by the weight of living. He pressed his thumbs into the meat of Essek’s foot, pushing up towards his toes, and Essek’s breath caught in his throat. The skin on the bottom of someone’s foot should never have been that soft but there it was, pliant and smooth beneath his thumbs. He worked the soreness from them, first the left foot and then the right, hyperfocusing on the ministrations of his task like a meditation. He kneaded Essek’s neglected muscles and for all of Essek’s quiet stillness every so often a sound would eke past his lips; A sharp inhalation, the quietest of vocalisations, the shadow of a groan. When Caleb would look up at Essek he would see him staring, attention focused on attention. Their eyes would meet like lightning struck and hold. Essek’s mouth was only just barely open, and his knuckles rested against the corner of it. The attention was one with which Essek fixed his gaze on Caleb at work. Being observed in such a way lit that fire in the pit of Caleb’s stomach. He was being admired; Essek watched Caleb with the enamored awe of the unexpected, and said nothing. </p><p>The second time had been different. They weren’t working through complex magic or trying to get their brains to work faster than their fingers could handle. The comfort of familiarity had settled in their bones, the need of each other’s company accepted in it’s inherent intimacy. Essek drew a bath for the two of them to enjoy. Books sat upon the small table beside his bath where the water was ready for them to sink into with comfortable silence, knee to knee, fingertip to fingertip along the porcelain side. The books would remain there untouched. Caleb was still in his trousers with his undershirt untucked and unlaced when Essek lowered himself into the bath and lifted his feet against the edge. Caleb leaned down to press a kiss against his big toe. His fingers wrapped around one foot and thumbs pressed against the line of delicate muscle.  He knelt down to be at level with the objects of his devotion, trailing playful kisses along the side of those so oft unused feet.  </p><p>Essek laughed, and gently pushed Caleb’s cheek with the ball of it. The softness of Essek’s skin contrasted the evening stubble prickling Caleb’s cheek. He pushed, and Caleb moved with it. His eyes closing in submission unexpectedly, and when they opened again Essek was watching, attentive and unsure if he had made a mistake, crossed some boundary he wasn’t aware of. Caleb took Essek’s foot in his hand again with more urgency in his grip, kissing a trail upwards. He took Essek’s big toe in his mouth and sucked, glancing back up in reassurance. </p><p>This, whatever this was? This was fine. This was good. This was <i>something</i>. </p><p>Caleb released the digit with a pop and kissed each toe in the line, trailing his tongue against the prints, down to dip between them and against the edge of each nail. This was <i>new</i>, and it filled him with that burning heat every new experience with Essek seemed to give him. It tingled under his skin, that fresh, new, burning connection to another being. It was a need that tugged and pulled him to give attention where attention was deserved; to show this beautiful shut-in of an elf that every bit of him was incredible, impressive, and worth admiration for simply by being a part of him. It was a drive to give Essek everything that Caleb ever needed to be shown himself, which Essek showed him without hesitation. He gave back with every line his tongue traced. </p><p><i>I don’t understand what you need</i> read in Essek’s eyes as he watched Caleb shower his feet with affection, but he couldn’t put it into words, because it wasn’t <i>true</i>. He opened his mouth to try to put words to his doubt, but he couldn’t.  Caleb smiled at him, reassuring, and placed that soft, delicate foot against his collarbone. </p><p>This is fine, the action said, this is <i>good</i>. Your superiority over everything that I am is transparent in the smoothness of your skin, the unworn and unchallenged. It told of a need to be made supplicant. In Caleb’s eyes, in his smile, and in his reassurance Essek <i>knew</i>. He recognised it in himself, an echo of the relaxation he felt when every weight on his shoulders fell away as Caleb grabbed his hips and fucked into him hard. He recognised it in the melt of his spine when Caleb chewed at his neck and clawed at hips in needy desperation, in all that heat he generated. </p><p>Essek recognised, and smiled. He traced up Caleb’s neck with his foot and then down under the hem of his neckline, before gently shoving his chest, sending him off kilter from the delicate balance on his own toes. </p><p>“If you would get off the floor and in this bath with me please.” He said as if it were an instruction and not a request, and Caleb held Essek’s face in his hands while he kissed him, kept kissing him as he got his remaining clothes off. The books remained untouched and unread for the evening, . </p><p>It became commonplace after that, another brand new form of intimacy in their growing collection of previously unexplored delights. Sometimes Caleb would drop to the floor in front of Essek and kiss his boots as if they were his feet, for they too rarely touched the floor, and never outside the cleanliness of his own home. He would hold where the heel of it bent into sole with his thumbs and wait for Essek to tilt Caleb’s chin up with the toes of that boot, to apply pressure, to his face or his chest, but he would never step. Not with the boots on, not until Caleb had removed them one at a time, carefully stripping bare Essek’s most untouched, unworn feature where no unworn feature should be. He would place his hands obediently behind his back and wait for some internal gravity to compress and keep them in place, or for the more gentle slip and slide of silk around his joints. </p><p>Only then would Essek’s foot press Caleb’s cheek hard into the floor, the ball of it against the edge of Caleb’s cheekbone, and soft, well manicured toes against his weather worn and imperfect skin. </p><p>“Is this what you want?” Essek would ask as if he didn’t already know that it was exactly what Caleb craved, for some perspective on his own existence in Essek’s gravity. He would nod and Essek would press down harder, politely request that he used his words, the way a teacher would politely ask when you have no choice but to answer.</p><p>Sometimes Caleb would lick his lips, dry from all that heat, and sometimes he would just breathe.  “Yes, please.” </p><p>Essek could walk on Caleb if he liked, float millimeters above his skin so that the hairs on Caleb’s arms stood on end. He could lower himself down, gently, slowly, until he could feel the pressure of Essek’s foot against his shoulder blades, every knot in his back, the dip beside the ever-jutting bones of his hips. Essek didn’t have to kick Caleb to turn him over, only nudge under his ribs with his toes, requesting without <i>really requesting</i>. “If you could.” </p><p>His toes pressed perfectly against Caleb’s clavicle, where he could, even at his own light weight, snap the one if he applied enough pressure. Of course he doesn’t; he would never, and that’s the point. Those toes traced up his chin and Caleb kissed the base of that foot before it went back down, toenails gently dragging across his skin. And then Essek’s foot was pressed against Caleb’s cock, hard, red and dripping against his stomach. That perfect foot would sully itself with him, rubbing up and down, tugging his foreskin with the friction. The head of his cock would be free to leak as those toes tugged ever so gently. Essek’s toes would bend so that the tops of them could nudge Caleb’s balls, a mime of a kick that could be there but wasn’t, and wouldn’t. That foot would rub and press and Caleb would rut against it, his neck arching, his hair sticking to the back of his neck and his shoulders from the sweat, and all that burning. </p><p>Sometimes Essek would talk him through it; Calmly and collectedly ask him how it felt, why he liked to be debased like this, and how he was going to have to clean up after himself when he finished. Sometimes he wouldn’t talk at all. Sometimes the sensation was enough, the knowing and the feeling of pressure, of being stepped on until he came on his stomach and between Essek’s toes. </p><p>Caleb could look up at Essek through bleary eyes the whole length of time it took for Essek to take him apart with such minimal effort, or he could clench them so tightly that upon their opening Essek shone like the sun that didn’t exist in that city he now called home. Either way Essek was a sight, powerful in his stature, and in the calm composure with which he held himself in spite of the mess Caleb would make, was making. Essek would just smile down at him, goad him, quietly with the lilt of an accent that his tongue took around Common. When it was over and sunbursts formed behind Caleb’s eyelids, all he could do was breathe and wait for Essek to join him down on the floor. Essek would undo whatever binding he had decided to put on Caleb’s wrists, letting the joints twist and turn with agency and momentum once again. Essek’s lips against his own were a comfort, and a question that Caleb would nod to in return. Delicate hands that were not quite as soft as Essek’s feet, which saw more use, brushed Caleb’s hair out of his face and rested against his cheek while he came back down to earth. His own calloused and worn feet were flat against the ground, now free hands able to hold onto the front of Essek’s shirt. </p><p>“Let me wash my mess off of you.” He would mutter, his nose pressed against Essek’s cheek, and Essek would smile. </p><p>“No, let me. It’s my mess as well.”</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>